“It pains me to say this,” said Webb, getting to his feet and coming to stand over her. “There is something a trifle common in your bearing.”

How Alice trembled. The modish Alice fled and the servant came back. “Mr. Brummell, he said I was the daintiest creature,” she ventured.

“Pah! Brummell!” said Webb in accents of loathing.

Alice was by now too crushed to protest. She had been so sure she looked all the crack. Had her style only been that of a kitchen maid?

“Miss Snapper will select your wardrobe for your forthcoming visit. Now, if I may have a word in private with my fiancée, Miss Snapper…?”

Emily Snapper rose reluctantly. She did not want to leave them alone together in case Alice persuaded Webb to accept her as she was. But Webb was already holding open the door for her.

When Miss Snapper had left, Webb came forward and took both Alice’s hands in his own and raised her to her feet. She really looked deuced pretty, he reflected. Too pretty by half. He had been acutely aware, as Alice had not, that she was already attracting a great deal of warm attention from the gentlemen of the ton. And he liked her like this, cringing and beaten and humble.

He caught her in his arms and pressed his mouth hard against her own. Alice’s tired mind registered that her lord had had garlic at some point earlier in the day, small beer and eggs, but apart from that, she felt no stirring of the senses.

“There!” he said triumphantly drawing back. “You must not faint from excess of emotion,” he added kindly, although Alice was standing, quite rigid, and never had any woman looked less like falling down in a faint.

“I shall call for you on Friday, my love,” he added. “Now, you will obey Miss Snapper for my sake. It is the duty of a wife to obey her husband implicitly. Do you know that?”

“Yes, Harold,” whispered Alice. Oh, she must change her ways and do as they say lest they guess her guilty secret.

The late Duke of Haversham had not returned to the grave. He was in fact very much alive—if a ghost can be said to be alive. He had found his days extremely lonely without Alice and had found himself thinking of her constantly. But, he told himself sternly, she would have to make a life without him, else how could she achieve a successful marriage? Then he wondered why these noble and altruistic thoughts left him so depressed. Finally he was almost able to put her completely from his mind. At times, he felt uneasily that she was in trouble and calling him, but he built a mental brick wall against her pleas in his mind. The sooner she forgot about him, the better. He had not visited the present Duke since the night he had lectured his successor on the evil of his ways.